LITMIR.BIZ

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can’t—I mean, thank you. Thank you!”

      After twenty-four weeks, the panel—composed of thousands of professionals from nearly one hundred nations—had voted. Another week and the votes were tallied. The top twelve proposals, one to match each of the twelve convoys, had been chosen.

      And his had claimed a spot. They were going to his star.

      They were going to LQ Pyx.

      Without picking up the glass he dashed for the coat closet and pulled out his jacket. Two more steps brought him to his apartment door, and he was already on the phone before it latched shut behind him.

      It was time for a party. The kind of party he hadn’t thrown since his undergraduate days.

      “C, send a message to the troops: we’re going in!”

      Even PhDs know how to get good and snockered.

      “Come on. Come on, it’s fun.” Reggie entwined his fingers with a young woman’s as he led her out into the night. With his free hand he toyed with the neck of his beer bottle, and his feet took stumbling, giddy steps through the grass. Behind them the party continued to roar.

      One of Reggie’s friends, Miguel, rented a house in the hills not far from campus, and Miguel had agreed to host the shindig. “It’s like your coming-out party,” he said, slapping Reggie on the back. “You know, like they have in the south when girls get their periods.”

      “That’s not what a coming-out party is for,” Reggie said. To be fair, he hadn’t a clue what it was for, but it couldn’t be that. Regardless, he let his friends go around telling everyone he was “coming out.” Somehow they’d found a way to turn the get-together into a celebration and a ribbing all at once.

      Light streamed into the backyard, and music with a heavy bass beat still rocked Reggie’s insides though they’d left the speakers far behind.

      With him was a dark-featured young woman, her hair as wavy and body as curvy as any Grecian goddess’—Abigail, she’d said her name was.

      Abigail. He liked how that sounded. He liked how her hand felt in his.

      He just wasn’t quite sure how her hand had actually found its way into his …

      The party was full of people Reggie didn’t know. Friends of friends, relatives of friends, walk-ins who’d come to investigate the noise and mooch some munchies. Abby—wait, no, she said not to call her that—Abigail was a cousin of a friend’s friend, getting her masters in English.

      “What do you study?” she’d asked.

      Oh. Right. Reggie had immediately grabbed her hand and led her out the back door. “I’ll show you.”

      Through the flimsy wire gate, up a steep incline (pausing so she could remove her shoes), around a little rocky outcrop, and they were at the top of a tall hill. The flat little college town spread out below them, and the wonderfully wide sky stretched out above.

      “Lie down,” he said, waving at a comfortable stretch of grass.

      She crossed her arms and gave him a skeptical raise of one eyebrow. “Yeah, right.”

      He was crestfallen, until he realized how he sounded. “Oh my god, no! I’m sorry—not like—sorry—no, look. Like this.” A little tipsy, his flop onto the ground was less than graceful. He stretched out his arms and shivered, as though he’d tucked himself into a comfortable bed. “You can’t see the stars from there,” he said when she leaned over him, hands on her hips.

      Apparently deciding Reggie had no evil intentions, she shrugged and sat down beside him. She craned her neck back, trying to take it all in.

      “This!” he said, reaching upward. “This is what I study.”

      “The stars?”

      “Yes. I’m an astrophysicist.” His tongue stumbled over the ysicist.

      “Oh. It’s your party. Congrats. A Planet United Mission is a big deal.”

      Reggie was half sure she was teasing. Big deal? he thought. Big deal? It’s the biggest deal in the history of big deals.

      It was also a big responsibility. But he didn’t want to think about that right now. Responsibility was not party-talk.

      “Noumenon is gonna be the greatest mission ever.” He’d meant to say something a little more profound, but his brain was floating in a beer haze. He reached for his drink, but couldn’t find the bottle. He’d set it down somewhere between here and the house.

      “Noumenon?” she pressed.

      “They said I could name the mission whatever I wanted.” He wrinkled his nose, trying to chase a scratch. “Nostromo was already taken, and I’m pretty sure it’s doomed, so …”

      She punched him lightly in the arm for the joke. “So you picked Noumenon? Why? What is that? Sounds like one of Achilles’ lovers—you know, Agamemnon, Patroclus, Noumenon …”

      “Agamemnon and Achilles weren’t—”

      She winked at him and he blushed. She was joking right back.

      “Oh. A—A noumenon is a thing which is, is real, but unmeasurable—the flip side of phenomenon. A phenomenon can be touched, tested, while a noumenon …” He wasn’t sure if he was explaining this right. For a moment he wished for sobriety. “What is a thought? What is a value, or a moral? These things exist, they’re real, but the thing itself can’t be directly measured.”

      “But how does that relate to your mission?”

      “The convoy’s gonna go to this star, see. Variable star, which is a phenomenon. A thing to poke and prod and study. But for me, it will always be unknowable. It’s real, but unreachable. That doesn’t make it a literal noumenon, but it … it feels fitting to me. There are things I can never know, things humanity can never know—or, hell, maybe I’m wrong and nothing is unknowable, nothing unmeasurable. But that just means the noumenal world is fleeting, a vast frontier.”

      She nodded to herself. “Noumenon. Okay. I think I like it.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Good, because I already sent in the paperwork, and I’m pretty sure it’s too late to change it.”

      She giggled and inched closer to him. “What do you love about them?” she asked quietly. He looked over just as a light breeze whipped her hair across her face and she tucked it back.

      “Who?”

      She laughed louder. “The stars.”

      He thought about it for a moment. “They’re pretty. Hold on, let me finish.” He held up a finger to stave off further snickering. “Pretty, but dangerous. Powerful. And … strange. They’re mysterious to me. They’re like lighthouses. Each one is different, and each is sometimes the only part of a system we can see.”

      “Lighthouses,” she murmured. “I like that.”

      “I wanted to be an astronaut. Still do.” He hadn’t admitted that since his undergrad days. It was a private dream, and he hadn’t told anyone in a long time for fear of seeming childish. But now … “To go into space—to see Earth as just another twinkling dot. If this dot can contain so much, but seem from afar like all the others—what else is out there?”

      “You’re a king of infinite space,” she said wistfully.

      He grinned, though he didn’t understand. “What?”

      “It’s from Hamlet. Your world could be the size of a walnut, but your mind gives you infinite space to explore. You’re here

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